When I was a synagogue rabbi, I bemoaned the fact that so much of what I did was death-centered. Well, the past couple of weeks have been a throwback to that time, due to a confluence of events: An interest by local organizations in having seminars on "end of life" care, and the Supreme Court of Canada's ruling, on February 6, that physician-assisted suicide should be legal.

The result is that this is the major topic everyone wants to hear about. So on Monday evening I spoke at a synagogue on Assisted Death, and Tuesday evening I spoke for a UJA program on end of life care. On Wednesday I have a lunch and learn at an accounting firm, and they want to talk about assisted death. Then, on Sunday of next week, I am to speak at another synagogue on End of Life care.

It's good that people want to hear Judaism speak to these issues, and I'm honoured to be asked, but boy... what I wouldn't give to be asked to speak about fertility treatments instead...

Thursday, February 19, 2015

In case the few remaining readers have been wondering where I've been, quite a bit of my time in the past week has been dedicated to writing a new edition of Shiur Theatre - "Esther's War" - for our Beit Midrash. In a presentation this Shabbos, we will look at the halachic and ethical questions raised by the bloodshed, and fear-based conversion, that occurred in the events of the original Purim.

I don't expect to share the script here (at least, not until I see how it is received on Shabbos...), but here is the accompanying source sheet. I don't imagine it will be all that intelligible without the script, but some of the sources may be interesting. It is also downloadable in pdf here.

One who converts in order to partake of a royal table,
or to be among Solomon's servants, is not a valid convert, per Rabbi Nechemiah.
For Rabbi Nechemiah said: Those who have converted for fear of wild animals or
due to dreams, and those who converted in the days of Mordechai and Esther,
are not valid converts…

Rav said: The law follows the view that they are all
valid converts [after the fact].

But doesn't the Talmud (Yevamot 79a) say regarding the
event with the Gibeonites in King David's day, that 150,000 people converted? Perhaps
they converted independently, as occurred in the days of Mordechai and
Esther…

The invasion of Canaan: Does the Torah endorse
bloodshed beyond self-defense, and looting?

And on the third day, when they were in pain, two sons
of Yaakov, Shimon and Levi, brothers of Dinah, took their swords and came upon
the secure city, and killed every male. And they killed Chamor and his son
Shechem by the sword, and they took Dinah from the house of Shechem, and they
left. The sons of Yaakov came upon the corpses and despoiled the city, for
contaminating their sister.

And these are the kings of the land whom Yehoshua and
the Children of Israel struck… One was the king of Jericho, one was the king of
Ai beside Bethel. One was the king of Jerusalem, one was the king of Hebron.
One was the king of Yarmut, one was the king of Lachish… all of the kings
were 31.

7.Devarim 20:10

כִּי־תִקְרַב אֶל־עִיר לְהִלָּחֵם עָלֶיהָ וְקָרָאתָ אֵלֶיהָ לְשָׁלוֹם:

When you draw near to a city, to battle it, you shall
call to it for peace.

"When you go to war against
your enemy" – A midrash emphasizes, "against your enemy – you wage
war against your enemies." The Torah establishes that you will battle
only those who show themselves to be your enemy, from whose enmity you have
suffered, and from whom you anticipate acts of enmity. Therefore, even should
you strike them, you shall only defend yourself. This message rejects all wars
of conquest.

Noachides are obligated to establish judges in every
place to judge these six commands and instruct the nation… and this is why all
of the members of Shechem were liable for death. Shechem kidnapped, and they
saw and knew and did not judge him…

There are insufficient grounds to permit action
against a community that refuses to fulfill its obligation and eliminate
murderers from their midst, so long as they may have the excuse of fear,
pressure and the like.

Deuteronomy 20:10 says, "you shall call to it for
peace", but that is where they have not acted upon Israel. Where they have
acted toward Israel, such as here [Shechem] where they had broken forth, doing
this repellent thing, then even though only one of them had done it, since
they had attacked first, Israel was permitted to respond. So, too, for all
wars, even where only one of them had acted, he is part of the nation. Since
they attacked first, we were permitted to go to war against them…

We may not declare war upon
any human being, anywhere, until we first sue for peace.
This applies both to "authorized wars" and "obligatory
wars," as it is written, "When you draw near to a city to fight
against her, you shall call to her for peace." Should they make peace and
accept the laws in which Noachides are instructed, we would not kill anyone
there. We would collect taxes, as it is written, "They will be tribute to
you, and will serve you."

Now the disgrace begins, and
we do not intend to cover it up. Had they killed Shechem and Chamor, justice
would certainly have been with them. But they did not spare the defenseless
men who were given into their hands, who had no strength. Worse, they
looted, and generally made the inhabitants pay for the crime of their
master. For this there was no justification.

When there is no substantive risk to our soldiers, there is no permission to strike lives or property.
However, when there is a discernible risk, one must remember that it is not
only a matter of weighing one unit opposite a civilian population on the scale.
The loss of one unit, or part of it, can affect the entire battle…

The price [of war] is also paid by the enemy, who is
also graced with the Divine image, and one should grieve whenever G-d's creations drown in the sea. On
this point, the issue of quantity is meaningful, and one certainly must weigh
the justifications for harming many in order to save an individual.

The eternal war with Amalek: Where does it come from,
and where is it going?

19.Verses of Amalek

Bereishit 36:12 Amalek is the
grandson of Esav

Shemot 17 Amalek's first unprovoked attack in the
wilderness

Bamidbar 14 Amalek's second unprovoked attack in the
wilderness

Devarim 25 Amalek's first unprovoked attack in the
wilderness, re-told

If any people seeks to
destroy us, we are commanded to do battle against it when it
rises up against us, and this battle of ours is an obligatory war on the basis
of the verse from Exodus (17:16), "The Lord will have war with Amalek
from generation to generation."

In the spring of 2004, as this book was slouching
toward completion, Jeffrey Goldberg reported in theNew Yorkerabout a series of disturbIing
interviews he had recently conducted with Jewish settlers in the West Bank and
Gaza. "The Palestinians are Amalek," he was told by Benzi Lieberman,
chairman of the Council of Settlements. "We will destroy them,"
Lieberman continued. "We won't kill them all. But we will destroy their
ability to think as a nation. We will destroy Palestinian nationalism."
And Moshe Feiglin, a leading Likud activist, told Goldberg: "The Arabs
engage in typical Amalek behavior. I can't prove this genetically, but this is
the behavior of Amalek."

And Esther said: If it would be good before the king,
and if I have found favour before him, and if it would be appropriate before
the king, and if I would be good in his eyes, let it be recorded to retract
the scrolls, the plan of Haman son of Hamedata the Aggagite, who has
written to destroy the Jews in all of the king's lands!...

And King Achashverosh said to Queen Esther and to Mordechai
the Jew: Behold, I have given the house of Haman to Esther, and they have hung
him upon the tree for sending his hand against the Jews. Now, write upon the
Jews as is good in your eyes in the name of the king, and seal it with the
king's ring, for one may not retract a text written in the king's name and
sealed with the king's ring.

And he wrote in the name of King Achashverosh… that
the king had permitted the Jews of every city to gather and stand upon their
lives, to destroy and kill and eliminate the collective might of the nations
who had besieged them, children and women, and take their spoils.

And the Jews of Shushan gathered on the 14th
of Adar as well, and they killed in Shushan 300 men, and they did not extend
their hand to the spoils. And the rest of the Jews in the king's lands
gathered and stood for their lives, and gained reprieve from their foes,
and killed their enemies, 75,000, and they did not extend their hand
to the spoils.

Wednesday, February 11, 2015

This past Friday, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the federal ban on assisting suicide violates the rights of Canadian citizens. As they put it here, "The prohibition on physician‑assisted dying infringes the right to life, liberty and security of the person in a manner that is not in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice." They ruled that the prohibition is "of no force or effect to the extent that they prohibit physician-assisted death for a competent adult person who (1) clearly consents to the termination of life and (2) has a grievous and irremediable medical condition (including an illness, disease or disability) that causes enduring suffering that is intolerable to the individual in the circumstances of his or her condition." The Canadian legislature now has twelve months to re-write the law to accommodate the view of the Supreme Court.

This is not the space for a full treatment of this subject (feel free to come to my upcoming talk on the subject at Shaarei Shomayim in Toronto on February 23rd). I will not go into halachah here, other than to say that Jewish law is very clear in forbidding actively ending a patient's life.

In this space, I'd just like to point out a tried and true legal principle: Hard cases make bad law. It would be inhuman and un-Jewish to deny the wishes of people who are suffering without remedy - but crafting legislation to address exceptionally difficult situations will produce laws that endanger the rest of society.

Here are some of the challenges such laws would need to address:
* Will we impose age limits, or will we go the way of Belgium, which permits the death of minors? In the Netherlands, a 17 year old - who cannot be trusted to vote - can override parental refusal and choose death.

* How will we avoid pressure on patients to choose assisted death? As Margaret Dore, a lawyer in the state of Washington, has testified from her experience with their legalized assisted suicide, the existence of this option leads to subtle and unsubtle pressure upon patients to choose death.

* Who will testify as to the patient's wishes, where the patient cannot speak? Paragraph 27 of Quebec's Assisted Suicide bill permits relatives to testify [only minors and members of the healthcare "team" may not do so]. Mind you, our Succession Law will not allow relatives to testify regarding the authenticity of a will, because of conflict of interest... but they could testify that a patient wanted to die?

* Who is going to pay for this - should OHIP (Ontario's provincial health insurance), which doesn't cover routine dental and eye exams, pay for death? [Paragraph 26 of Quebec's Act seems to say that Quebec's provincial health insurance does cover the cost of ending a patient's life.] And if not, then could a suffering person be denied death - a human right, per the Supreme Court - because he couldn't pay for it?

As I said above, we must find a way to help people who are suffering. But in my view, licensing assisted suicide is fraught with so many problems as to make responsible legislation an impossibility.

Wednesday, February 4, 2015

Since ISIS began spreading a video showing their burning of captured Jordanian pilot Moath al-Kasaesbeh, various writers have tried to explain the psychology behind both the burning and its publication. CNN posted a piece suggesting the act was meant to communicate fearlessness. Forbes added that it was a recruiting tool, meant to appeal to those who would find it attractive. The Observer explained the video as intimidation of potential opposition.

I believe there is merit to all of those points, but to me there is another, deeper issue involved: Religion. Put simply, burning Moath al-Kasaesbeh alive, and posting the video, was not necessarily part of a strategy. Rather, it was a religious act for ISIS. Indeed, along with the video they disseminated "talking points" providing an Islamic justification for their actions.

It is fundamental to the nature of a religious cult that members of the cult see inherent beauty in fulfilling its religious demands - and the more demanding, the better. To a member of a religious cult, the sight of cult members joyously carrying out their duties is the most attractive and inspiring scene imaginable. (Indeed, ISIS made sure to air footage of cheering crowds, including young children.) As far as the objections of outsiders - they are simply uninformed non-initiates, who don't understand. So ISIS had no concern for international revulsion; to them, any objective observer would recognize the beauty in the burning. Anyone else is simply a fool unworthy of consideration.

But if that's correct, then we must ask: what about us? Jews also see inherent beauty in fulfillment of our religion's demands. And indeed, when people outside our community express hostile opinions of our practices - shechitah (kosher animal slaughter), for example, or brit milah (circumcision) - we, too, might write them off as uninformed. So if religious fervor can so drastically corrupt the human moral compass, how can we prevent ourselves from misinterpreting Judaism and descending to ISIS-level depravity?

Judaism has an important, albeit fragile, safety net: respect for the opinion of non-Jewish society. From the biblical message (Bereishit 1:27) that all human beings are created "in the image of G-d"...

to the biblical examples of non-Hebrews like Malkitzedek (Bereishit 14) and Yitro (Shemot 18) as people whose opinions mattered to our righteous ancestors...

to the talmudic declaration that "The law of the government is the law" (Bava Kama 113a)...

to the talmudic observation that "The pious of the nations of the world also gain admittance to the next world" (Taanit 29a, Yalkut Shimoni 765)...

to the legal obligation of kiddush HaShem (sanctifying G-d's Name in the eyes of the world) (Yechezkel 38:23, Yoma 86a, Yerushalmi Bava Metzia 2:5)...

...Jewish tradition teaches the Jew to value the opinion of his non-Jewish neighbours. Not to the extent of denying G-d's Word and cancelling the Torah, but to the extent of compelling us to think very carefully when our values don't fit those of general society, and to accept outside wisdom when appropriate.

Of course, there are areas in which the Torah's laws ultimately do run counter to society's values, where society and Jewish tradition view each other reciprocally as benighted. Some areas cannot be reconciled, and that's why I view this safety net as "fragile". But overall, our respect for the opinions of those who are outside our circle plays an important self-policing role, ensuring that we do not fall into self-absorbed, ISIS-style excesses. Thank G-d for this very important element of Judaism.

May we always be careful to preserve that respect, and the self-awareness it brings.